Investigating the relationship between emotional contagion, emotion regulation and social competence: a developmental and comparative investigation.

理解他人和与他人联系的能力是我们社会和心理健康的基础;它也使人类拥有独特的技能，包括沟通和合作。其中一个重要的情感过程是情绪感染（EC），它构成了共情的基础。在成年期，与EC相关的结构与健康的社会功能相关，而健康的社会功能又受到有效情绪调节（ER）能力的影响。然而，EC和ER的个体差异如何塑造儿童形成和维持与他人健康关系的能力仍然是未知的。此外，我们还不知道这些过程之间的相互作用的哪些方面是人类独有的，从而使更高层次的社会情感功能成为可能，而这正是我们这个物种的特征。本研究旨在对来自不同社会经济背景的幼儿（3-8岁）进行一项系统的发展研究，以确定EC、ER和社会能力之间的复杂模式和相互作用，以及这如何影响健康的社会功能。为了理解这些过程的进化基础和它们独特的人类属性，我将对我们最近的近亲黑猩猩进行互补的比较研究。为了理解EC在社会功能中的作用，我将把创新的瞳孔测量实验与社会网络分析结合起来，并辅以实验/ ESRC NINE DTP研究生奖学金提名表/15项研究中的第3页和行为数据来测量合作和ER。对健康人类社会发展驱动因素的研究将对儿童时期的社会政策产生重要影响，使我们能够培养儿童培养有意义关系的环境，并找到更好地支持那些与社会隔离作斗争的人的方法。

The ability to understand and connect with othersunderpins our social and mental wellbeing; it alsoenables uniquely human skills, including incommunication and cooperation. A crucial affectiveprocess involved in this is emotional contagion (EC),which forms the basis of empathy. In adulthood,constructs related to EC are associated with healthysocial functioning, which in turn is influenced by thecapacity for effective emotion regulation (ER). However,it remains unknown how individual variability in EC andER shape children's ability to form and maintain healthyrelationships with others. Furthermore, it is unknownwhat aspects of the interaction between these processesare unique to humans, enabling the higher level socioemotionalfunctioning that defines our species. I aim toconduct a systematic developmental investigation, withyoung children (aged 3-8) from diverse socioeconomicbackgrounds, in order to identify the complex patternsand interaction between EC, ER and social competenceand how this influences healthy social functioning. Tounderstand the evolutionary foundations of theseprocesses and their uniquely human properties, I willaugment this with complementary comparative researchin chimpanzees, our closest living relatives. Tounderstand the role of EC in social functioning, I willcombine innovative pupillometry experiments with SocialNetwork Analysis, complemented with experimental/ ESRC NINE DTP Postgraduate Studentship Nomination Form/ Page 3 of 15studies and behavioural data to measure cooperationand ER. Research into drivers of healthy human socialdevelopment will hold key implications for social policyon childhood, allowing us to cultivate environmentswhere children foster meaningful relationships, and findways to better support those struggling with socialisolation.